Sleeping in My Childhood Bedroom as an Adult
Glow in the dark stars tumble
into black, their light hanging
like the feet
of a man tied to death. I trace
the outlines of memories and pull them
to my nose, they smell like
patchouli and my father’s
velvet coat. Gray shapes
dance to the window. Are they
the ghosts of my dead dogs
or the angels I overheard
my mother asking for help? Or maybe just
teenage headlights, sneaking back into their parents’
driveway. The laundry
room moans and shakes
behind a poster
of New York City’s face. The dryer thumps
against my wall. Round
round round. Clothes rise
and fall
like the air lifting up my chest. My mother’s
Elvis T-shirt. My father’s white
briefs. The noise goes
in circles. Up
and down. Taped on the fridge
is a photo dated two
days after my birth. My mother is holding
my head to her chest, my feet swing above
Elvis’s bleached teeth. And I still remember
my father
getting nervous and shouting
and shutting
the door when my brother and I found
him in his white briefs. Rise
and fall. I focus on the dark
and the noise and the clothes
that make the
dark warm. Up
and down.
Rise
and fall. Round
round round.
Sitting in a Classroom Where Everyone Is Smarter Than Me (Except Maybe That Guy with the Taco Tattoo)
I want to pull my knees to my chest
and make myself small and see
through like the balled-up sheets
of cling wrap I find in the drawers of my mother’s
kitchen. But I don’t do that
because I wouldn’t be small
or see through to the people
sitting across the table. They would still see
a girl with uncombed hair
wearing a baggy t-shirt she got free from a bank
because she never learned
how to not be ashamed
of her breasts. And they might find it strange
if this girl slipped her feet from
the mud-painted rainboots
that keep her weighted
to the government-bought linoleum,
and then if she pulled
her feet and the hand-knit socks
that held them up to the seat of her chair,
and what if her neck let go
so that her forehead sat balanced between
the tops of her knees.
Yes, that would look strange.
Instead I move my left thigh
over my right and tie my calves
into a knot. I can’t see
my legs beneath the table
but I imagine them as the twisted strings
of green and pink
taffy my father pulled from his suitcase
whenever he was afraid
that he’d been gone
for too long. Throw away
your wrappers, he told me. My mother yelled
when she found them
rolled into worlds
and tucked inside
the corners of kitchen drawers.